Is Bringing in Out-of-District Campaign Cash Out of Bounds?

The public-interest folks at CALPIRG have released a list of state legislators who raised nearly all of their 1994 campaign dollars from outside their districts.

The top 10 list includes three Valley-area lawmakers:

* Assemblywoman Barbara Friedman (D-North Hollywood), in third place after raising 98.03% of her campaign money from outside her district.

* Assemblyman Richard Katz (D-Sylmar) holds down eighth place statewide with 96.31% of his 1994 money coming from sources outside the district.

* Sen. Herschel Rosenthal (D-Van Nuys) with 96.27% raised outside his district.

Statewide, candidates for legislative office in 1994 received 80% of their campaign funds from sources outside their districts.

Why do the watchdogs at CALPIRG (California Public Interest Research Group) care about these numbers?

Because, they say, legislators who raise their money from outside sources, including lobbyists, are beholden to them, rather than the folks they represent back home.

In the recently ended legislative session, for instance, “many of the types of things that passed didn’t really represent the public interest,” said CALPIRG Associate Director Wendy Wendlandt. “Ordinary people aren’t getting represented.”

As examples, Wendlandt cites the electric industry deregulation, which she calls a bailout, and an inadequate earthquake insurance program.

But Katz, a past winner of the group’s legislator of the year award, said the CALPIRG list represents a “naivete and a simplistic view that’s almost frightening.”

Unless candidates from working-class and poor districts are able to raise money outside district boundaries, they can’t compete with either rich districts or self-funded candidates, Katz said.

He dismissed the list as a way for CALPIRG “to hype the group’s initiative.”

That’s Proposition 212, which would, among other things, limit candidates to raising no more than 25% of their funds from outside their home turf.

And by the way, No. 1 in raising money outside his district was Sen. Steve Peace (D-Chula Vista) with a hefty 98.82%.

If at First You Don’t Secede

Valley VOTE, a coalition of homeowner activists that was organized to support the so-called Valley secession bill by Assemblywoman Paula Boland (R-Granada Hills), isn’t giving up, even after the measure’s demise.

The bill would have eliminated the Los Angeles City Council’s power to veto a secession drive by any part of the city.

Although the bill died in a Senate committee last week, the group met this week to make plans to support the “Boland bill concept,” said Jeff Brain, the co-chairman of the group.

That means that the group will ask candidates in upcoming elections to take a stand on the defeated bill, he said. The group will also lobby Boland or others to reintroduce the bill in next year’s legislative session.

In addition, the group will try to make life miserable for the bill’s biggest opponent, Senate President Pro Tem Bill Lockyer (D-Hayward), when he makes a Valley appearance next week, Brain said.

Brain added that the group will also try to get other parts of the city to form separate chapters, all of which would support the “Boland bill concept.”

But Brain and the rest of the group may have to march ahead without the Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., one of the Valley’s most influential business groups.

VICA’s chairman, Marvin Selter, recommended this week that the association, in essence, cut its ties with Valley VOTE until it is clear what Valley VOTE’s new mission is.

Robert Scott, a spokesman for VICA, said his organization joined forces with Valley VOTE to support the Boland bill. Now that the bill is dead, the alliance is essentially over, he said.

But sources who attended VICA’s local issues committee meeting this week said Selter and others appeared concerned that Valley VOTE’s leadership took too much of a hard-line attitude on the bill. VICA, known for being conservative and pragmatic, would rather speak for itself on Valley matters in the future, such as another secession bill and proposals to reform the city’s charter, sources said.

By George

The September issue of John F. Kennedy Jr.’s political mag George lists Assemblywoman Sheila Kuehl (D-Santa Monica) as one of the 20 most fascinating women in politics.

The first-term legislator finds herself amid the likes of Arianna Huffington, Barbra Streisand and Bay Buchanan, Pat’s sister.

Kuehl, who attended the Democratic convention in Chicago, also had a turn on “Oprah,” where she appeared with Kennedy.

The magazine blurb on the state’s first openly gay legislator bursts with kudos for Kuehl, especially from GOP Assembly colleague Larry Bowler, an ex-cop whom the magazine likens to a conservative attack dog.

“Sheila is charming,” Bowler said. “She’s politically all wrong, but she couches it in a package that’s warm and friendly.”

In her former life, Kuehl was the brainy Zelda on the TV series “The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.’

Then she went to Harvard law school and became a national expert on domestic violence.

And for her next political turn, Kuehl notes in George that her term in the Assembly will be up in 2000--the same time the term of her state senator, Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles), expires.

“It’s a nice conjunction,” Kuehl said.

Signing Off

Los Angeles City Councilman Richard Alarcon represents the northeast San Fernando Valley. So he was shocked when his name came up during a recent television news report about a landlord in the Wilshire area who displayed a sign saying she will not rent to Jews, gays, lesbians, whites and people with AIDS.

The landlord, whom police declined to identify, launched into a litany of racial bigotry when a television news crew approached her about the sign.

On tape, the landlord referred to Jews and Mexicans in derogatory terms and then began to slam Alarcon, using obscene terms for “Mexican.”

Alarcon said he doesn’t know the woman and cannot explain why she would criticize him. His only guess was that perhaps because the cameraman who approached her was Latino, she immediately criticized the first Latino she could think of: Alarcon.

“Maybe I should be flattered,” he joked.

Whatever the reason, Alarcon’s political response was no joke. He introduced a motion this week asking the city attorney’s office and the chief legislative analyst to investigate whether the racist sign violated city laws. If the sign is legal, the motion instructs the agencies to draft a law prohibiting such signs.

The motion, which was signed by six other council members, is scheduled to be considered Friday.

Alarcon also issued a statement along with Rabbi Marvin Sugarman of Shaaray Zedek Congregation calling the sign “vile, ugly, racist.”

*

QUOTABLE: “They want to string up the neck of San Fernando Valley people. They want to keep them by the neck and squeeze their blood.”

Assemblywoman Paula Boland, on the city of Los Angeles’ role in defeating her secession bill